


retrace

by adreamaloud, daneorange (adreamaloud)



Category: Skins (UK) RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-17
Updated: 2009-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:32:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/adreamaloud, https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreamaloud/pseuds/daneorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unexpected nudge of this familiar thing</p>
            </blockquote>





	retrace

_Retrace the steps we took when we met worlds away.  
Counting backwards while the stars are falling._  
-anberlin, retrace.

It’s several years after the end of it when she bumps into Kat again, in a pharmacy. Lily’s pushing into the door without looking, struggling to close a drenched umbrella, and when she turns she almost hits Kat with the still dripping end of it.

Kat looks like she means to curse, only to have the words drain out of her quietly when she looks up, catches Lily’s eye. Instead, Kat says, “Oh,” takes a long moment before she puts herself back together with a soft, “Hi.” And then, “Awful weather, isn’t it.”

 _Of all things, the weather._ Lily smiles, notes how the shade of her hair has changed, how Kat shifts from surprise to familiarity so easily, as if to dismiss the years between. “Global warming,” Lily says, clearing her throat and coughing slightly. “It’s bad for you, obviously.”

Kat laughs a little, looks down on her toes, and Lily shrugs off her coat, suddenly feeling warm. Someone passes through the space between them with a soft, “excuse me,” and Kat goes, “Hey, I’d love to chat, but I kind of have to run.” She gestures to a car up front – it’s a tinted black sedan flashing its warning lights – and Lily assumes it’s Kat’s. “I’m double parked.”

Lily says, “Oh,” and then, “By all means.” She clears her throat again, a part of her a bit disappointed that Kat won’t – can’t – stay.

“But hey, we should catch up, yeah?” Kat offers, fumbling with the phone she had fished out of a pocket. When Lily arches her brows, she adds, in a lowered voice, “I lost your number,” apologetically, and then, “I mean, my phone. That had your number.”

Lily turns to retrieve her phone in kind, tries not to frown. “S’alright,” she says, leaning in closer to see if Kat’s getting her number right. Up close, she still looks pretty much the same, Lily thinks, and when Kat looks up and smiles, she says, “Your number sounds like the old one; the same one after all these years, then?”

Lily just smiles, nods; feels the unexpected nudge of this familiar thing.

*

Lily tries not to think too much about it, but Kat manages to sneak into everything, including that one time, on-air, when Lily mentions having run into Kathryn Prescott at a pharmacy on a rainy afternoon.

“Prescott, as in the girls on Skins,” her co-anchor asks, and when Lily laughs, embarrassed, belatedly muting her own microphone, Alice just continues, “Sometimes, Loveless, I forget how you were once this famous teenager.”

They spend a good fifteen minutes trying to limit the conversation. “It’d been a while,” Lily says, when she’s managed to laugh it all out of her system now to be able to speak in proper sentences. “Since I last saw her; she hasn’t changed, at all.”

Alice says, “I really have to ask if her hair’s still the same shade; I loved that one she had during that first run.” And then, “Whatever is she up to now?”

Lily almost caves when Alice mentions her hair, nearly says, Me too; but then upon catching herself, she settles for, “This conversation is betraying our ages.” And then, “And to answer that, I really didn’t have time to stare nor ask, she was quite in a rush.”

“Sounds like there’s much catching up to do, then.”

“I gave her my number,” Lily says, automatically, and across her, Alice lights up, amused. “I’ll get back to you after we’ve spoken, yeah?”

“If you’re listening, Kathryn Prescott, call her.”

“Alice,” Lily says, putting on her best effort at a warning voice, yet the end of it unravels into a laugh anyway.

Lily’s still laughing when they cut to commercial. “I didn’t know you watched Skins,” she says, taking off her headset. “How _old_ are you?”

“Shut up,” Alice rolls her eyes, shrugging and laughing in kind. “It was quite an amusing show, taken in with a proper frame of mind.”

Lily tosses a balled up piece of paper over and hits Alice on the shoulder with it. “A _proper_ frame of mind? Come on, it wasn’t _that_ bad.”

“You say that, of course,” Alice just says, still grinning as she stares at the clock counting down the seconds before they air again. “You’re the one snogging Emily Fitch.”

Lily feels her eyes go wide, and her cheeks burn a little. “Oh god, you did fucking watch, didn’t you.”

“Naomi/Emily. I ship it.” And then, glancing over at her briefly, “Babe, you’re blushing.”

As the On-Air sign goes red, Lily tosses her headset back onto the dashboard, puts her microphone on mute and lets it go, laughing like she hasn’t in a long time.

*

“If it means anything,” Alice says, on their way out of the building after the show. “You looked good together.” She peers out of a window, notes the heavy clouds above. “This shitty weather just keeps on getting shittier.”

Lily pretends to follow suit, lowers her head a bit to look herself, but her head is filled with sharp short bursts of memories. She doesn’t say anything.

*

The phone rings halfway through dinner; Lily nearly trips on a misplaced chair on her way to where her mobile lay atop a table, charging near a wall socket. She answers without looking, “Hello?”

“Hi.” Lily feels herself still, for a moment, trying to place the voice. “I totally would have called in, but you never came back on air, so I just guessed your shift was over?”

Lily takes a belated moment to peek at her caller ID. _Of course,_ she breathes in, says, “Hey Kat,” after a while, leaning against the wall and bracing herself. “So you heard, this morning?”

There’s a pause on the other end before, “I turn my radio on in the morning,” Kat just says. “I mean, while driving to work.”

Lily bites her lip to keep from giggling at the implication of it, manages a small, “Ah, is that right,” despite the many ways her chest feels a bit ticklish, just now. “Sorry, it just came out. You don’t mind, do you?”

Kat makes a small sound on the other end before, “Me, mind? That my name gets mentioned on radio at all, certainly not,” she says, laughing a little even. Lily laughs along, relieved. “You sound lovely, by the way,” adds Kat, her voice rough around the edges and Lily sinks into the wall, a little; she remembers how Kat used to do this all the time – flirt with her in her subtle, barely-there ways that Lily never really fully managed to be immune from.

“You haven’t changed, have you,” Lily only says.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” says Kat, and through the line, Lily almost feels her blushing. After a quiet while, Kat clears her throat as she says, “Actually, I was wondering if you were free tonight, or something.”

Lily bites into her lip harder, stretches and arranges herself against the wall as she thinks of something to say. Eventually, she settles for, “It’s a weeknight, Kathryn,” though she says it so half-heartedly, her words can’t even hold themselves upright alone.

“So?”

“So, you have work tomorrow, don’t you?”

“I promise we won’t be out too long,” Kat just says.

Lily holds onto her phone tighter, smiles as she remembers how shit Kat was at keeping promises of this sort, yet despite all practical knowledge, Lily finds herself saying yes.

*

She meets Kat in a diner a couple of blocks from the pharmacy, and when Lily catches the time, she sees it’s half past 10. She finds Kat seated in a corner booth with French fries; Kat lights up when she catches Lily’s eye, gestures with a fry-wielding hand for her to come over.

“A bit of a late snack?” Lily greets, sliding into the seat opposite Kat, pushing her bag off her shoulders. Kat nods, licking the salt and ketchup off a finger, and Lily looks away, smiling to herself.

“Not too late, really,” says Kat, when she’s done, pushing the plate of fries closer to Lily and leaning in. She grins at Lily until Lily arches her brows in a wordless question. Kat laughs lightly at the face Lily’s making. “This is just. Wow, yeah? I’m just glad you could make it, you know.”

Lily laughs, hoping the noise would drown out the color of her face. “Shut up, Prescott,” she just says, waving a dismissive hand. And then, her eyes focusing on Kat a bit later, she adds, “You _really_ haven’t changed at all.”

Kat takes a moment to absorb that, quiets for a bit. After a while, she only says, “You’ll be surprised,” before shifting her eyes.

*

As it turns out, Kat still is shit at keeping promises and they end up parting reluctantly at half past 2 in the morning, though the surprise really is that they’re both sober after four hours.

“Well, obviously I can’t get smashed if I’m driving,” Kat says, smiling as they walk to her car, parked on a curb a few meters from the diner.

“Well and good,” Lily says. “That’s one less thing I’d worry about, yeah?”

Kat nods, says nothing until they reach the car, upon which Lily leans in for a goodbye hug. Kat awkwardly puts her arms around her, hesitating at first; the gesture doesn’t strike Lily as uncomfortable, and finds the uncertainty actually rather fond. As they part Kat offers, “Let me drive you home.”

Lily turns around, says, “No need, I’ll catch a cab.”

“Come on, Lils,” says Kat, a hand around Lily’s arm. “Sides, it would buy us more time, yeah?”

It’s not like Lily has ever managed to deny Kat anything before; not especially when they’re at least _touching_.

*

Kat says nothing on the drive to Lily’s apartment, except when asking for directions. Lily sits on the passenger seat, fidgets with her seatbelt as she tries not to stare at Kat’s hands gripping the gear shift and the wheel, alternately, watching the skin of the back of her hand move; tries not to swallow all too visibly as she thinks about Kat’s hands, altogether.

When they get to Lily’s apartment complex, Kat rolls slowly to a stop at the gate. “You didn’t have to,” Lily says, turning to her, “But thanks, really. I had a grand time.”

“Likewise,” Kat smiles.

Lily removes her seatbelt, sits contemplating on the passenger seat for a minute. She thinks about this, about how long this suspended belief can last, this time; about how long it should take now for either of them to get back to their senses. Lily knows this place, where everything seems exempt from the passage of time; where it’s all too easy not to think about the years between; where the whole notion of picking up where they left off so easily is so attractive.

“You all right?” Kat asks, moving in to lay a hand on Lily’s, still braced on the dashboard.

Kat’s hand is cold. Looking at it half-covering hers, at the shadow it casts under the street lights that stream in through the wind shield, Lily can’t help but think about the could-have-beens, for a split-second – what if things had gone a bit differently; what if this really meant something more; what if Kat was just really damned good at keeping things close to her chest, as she had in those final days leading to the wrap?

Lily flinches, finally. “Yeah,” she says, pulling her hand from underneath and making for the door. “Thanks again.”

Before closing the door, she hears Kat say, “We should do this again sometime.”

Lily only smiles weakly in return, pushes the door closed as she mutters another, “Thanks.” Through the heavily tinted windows, Lily tries to make out Kat’s face one last time, but fails.

*

As promised, Lily reports to Alice the following day – no, the hair isn’t quite the same shade and is actually shorter, and that lately, Kat’s been involved in publishing.

“It strikes me as odd, that neither of you went into acting full-time,” says Alice, standing beside Lily at the lift. “I mean, that was thoroughly well-acted, Loveless. Considering.”

Shaking her head, Lily steps out first as the lift opens to their floor. “Whatever, Alice,” she says, smiling through a yawn. “And care to note, I actually was in theater before I landed this job.”

“You really should be somewhere you could, you know,” Alice says, gesturing to her face. “Take advantage of the facial expressions you are actually capable of.”

Lily snorts, puts on her headset and speaks into her microphone, the cursory greeting. When she looks up, the clock strikes 8. _Just in time,_ she breathes, and somewhere at the back of her head, she’s thinking about Kat, driving, somewhere.

*

Out of the blue, Alice asks, “I’ve always wondered if it ever got awkward, dealing with all that talk that you were actually dating in real life at the time?”

Lily blinks, waits for the look on Alice’s face shift; when it doesn’t, it dawns on her she actually has to answer. “No, not really,” she says, after a while; looking back, though, Lily thinks it’s only perhaps they never really paused long enough to actually deal. “Somehow, we both knew where we stood; it was work, and we were lucky to have had as much fun.” And then, realizing they are on-air, she adds, “Why does this feel like an interview?”

“I’m only naturally curious,” Alice says, shrugging, and Lily rolls her eyes. “It’s not like your boyfriend minds, does he?”

Lily is shaken, for a moment, at the mention; of course, she had this coming. “No, I don’t think so,” she just says, and the conversation shifts to something else after that.

*

Kat doesn’t wait too long to call; Lily finds her phone ringing around lunch time.

“You’re seeing someone,” Kat says, in lieu of a proper greeting.

Lily hesitates a little, pushing her lunch around with a fork before letting it fall altogether with a dull thwack against the edge of her plate. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the last time?” It’s entirely accusatory, but the way Kat says it – all too soft, resigned even – leaves Lily feeling guilty of the omission instead of offended at this display of entitlement.

“Didn’t feel like I had to,” says Lily, before returning it. “Aren’t you?” The pause in between is too long. “I mean, seeing someone yourself?”

After a while, Kat says, “Here and there, nothing ever serious.”

Lily breathes in. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“Lily,” sighs Kat on the other end, and Lily feels her heart sink a little. “Is he the same one? From when we met, I mean.”

Lily bites her lip. “On and off.”

“But same.”

Lily picks her fork back up, stabs a little here and there, watching helplessly as her lunch loses its appeal entirely. “I still don’t follow, why this is such a big deal,” she says, but she knows how this is only very minimally true.

Kat doesn’t speak for a long while; Lily holds her breath, listens in closely to Kat’s on the other end. In the absence of words, breathing is all there is.

Later, Kat says, “Are you free next Tuesday then?”

“Tuesday’s a good day,” Lily just says, closing her eyes.

*

It’s the same spot in the same diner at around the same time, every Tuesday, for the next few weeks.

*

“How come we never bumped into each other before,” asks Lily on one of those Tuesday nights, sitting across Kat in the diner and opening a beer. “I mean, I’ve been frequenting that pharmacy since I moved here.”

“I’m fairly new, actually,” says Kat, running a fingertip along the edge of her glass of iced tea. “Give or take a few months.”

“Where were you?”

“Oh you know,” Kat only says, looking into her drink. “All over the place.”

Lily stares at the condensation on her beer in kind. “Publishing, yeah?” she just says for the lack of anything else.

Kat shakes her head. “I dated a photographer.”

“Oh.” Lily looks up just in time to catch the look on Kat’s face, seemingly heavy with the weight of memory. “How long ago was this?”

“A couple of years ago.”

Lily takes a long swig from her beer, considers carefully the next question; she’s itching to prod – who was it? Why did it end? Instead, she settles for a polite, “You all right?” When in doubt, she tells herself, propriety works.

Kat shifts her eyes back to Lily, gives off a little smile. “Not like I still love her, or anything. It’s just,” she sighs, and something just shifts roughly in Lily’s chest at the word, her breath catching in her throat. “I don’t know. It’s a long time ago.”

Lily swallows hard before, “I’m sorry,” placing a hand over Kat’s on the table.

They’re quiet a while, before Kat finally says, “It’s getting late.” She slides her hand from under Lily’s, and then motions for the tab.

*

Kat cancels the following Tuesday. Lily tells her it’s okay, but she goes to the diner anyway. _Stupid fucking body clock,_ she just thinks throughout the meal.

*

Alice catches it, of course, the following morning. “You’re not well, Loveless,” she says, and Lily only sighs in response. “Were you with Kat last night?”

“No.”

Alice purses her lips carefully, taps a finger lightly over the dashboard. “Are you all right, then?” she asks, drawing the words out slowly, as if speaking to a child.

Lily says, “No.”

Alice shakes her head, sighing in kind as she puts her headset on. “Go get yourself some ice cream, or something,” she says, fixing her eyes on the clock, counting down. “I got this, okay?”

Lily manages a little smile, mutters “Thanks” before pushing against the table and getting out.

*

She’s sitting outside the pharmacy with an ice cream cone when Kat’s message comes: _Not on the show today?_

Lily smirks at her mobile before beginning to draft her reply. _Not feeling too well,_ she says. She’s barely even pressed Send when Kat’s name starts flashing on her screen.

“You all right?” asks Kat. Lily sighs, listens in to the faint sound of the radio in the background, the soft whirr of her engine.

“You shouldn’t be using your mobile while driving,” Lily just says. “But I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

“You home then?” Kat asks, and Lily’s still considering the question when Kat immediately follows it with, “Where are you?”

So Lily thinks, _Fuck it, then,_ says, “I’m at the pharmacy,” without even knowing why she agrees she owes Kat such an honest answer to begin with.

“Which one?”

“You know which one.”

There’s a shuffle of papers in the background, and for a moment Lily worries, a little. “Oh, fuck this,” Kat mutters, before, “Don’t move, yeah?”

Kat disconnects before Lily puts together anything to say; sitting there with her desperately melting ice cream, she asks herself, _What the fuck now?_ and does as she is told for the next half hour.

*

Lily’s in the middle of her second cone when Kat arrives, rolling past her with a lowered window, slowly. “I thought you weren’t feeling well?” she asks, smiling lightly as she leans over the passenger seat to peer at Lily.

Lily looks away, tries to hide a smile in kind. “I was,” she says, licking at her ice cream absently, once. “Why do you think I’m out here eating ice cream instead of somewhere else, working like a productive adult should?”

“I figured,” Kat just says, reaching over to open the door. “Get in.”

“What?” Lily turns her head back sharply, beholds the wide smile Kat has on, confused. “Aren’t you, like, supposed to be employed today?”

Kat rolls her eyes. “Live a little, Loveless.”

Lily looks at her briefly, tries to talk herself out of this dangerous thing, before conceding that she’s failing magnificently at it. “Fine,” Lily sighs, after a while, caving in. “What do you have in mind?”

Kat shrugs as she restarts the engine; the smile she has on turns wicked and familiar and Lily glances at her watch, noting how early it is. _Christ,_ she tells herself, letting her head roll back into the backrest, as the mixture of the steadily growing pounding in her heart and the ridiculous fluttering of butterflies in her stomach begins to teeter toward maddening.

*

The next time Lily remembers to catch the time on her watch, it’s nearly sunset; they’re leaning against the hood of Kat’s car, parked near the pier, looking out to the sea. Lily’s staring at a yacht moored faraway when Kat asks about dinner.

“Are you sure you don’t need to be someplace else,” asks Lily.

Kat shakes her head, says, “Not really,” before backtracking a little. “Unless of course you have to be?” Lily turns her head just in time to see the look on Kat’s face – half hope, half caution. “Be somewhere else, I meant,” she continues, completely mistaking the look on Lily’s face as that of a question.

“That’s not what I meant,” says Lily softly, smiling even. “I really was worried I was taking much of your time.”

“Don’t be silly,” Kat says, brushing her hand tentatively against Lily’s forearm. “I could go on and on like this, you know?”

Lily looks down, feeling her face flush, the warmth crawling all over her body; half-hates Kat, actually, for this – her sheer ability to take completely ordinary words, put them together and make her feel this much.

*

Over dinner, Lily tries to prod, carefully. “Do you still want to see her, then?” Kat just shakes her head without looking up from her plate and Lily sighs, knowing exactly how horribly she just fared. “Kat.”

Kat only mutters, “Sorry,” softly, stilling her fork. Lily says nothing, just looks on as Kat fiddles aimlessly around. After a while, Kat asks, “Does it really matter to you?” And then, off the look on Lily’s face, she continues with, “That I talk about her?”

Lily tries to block it out, but in the end, she knows it does matter -- only she doesn’t have a good explanation as to why. And so she’s left with, “I can understand if you don’t want to.”

Nodding, Kat just says, “Thanks.”

Very little is said that night, and the drive home is entirely quiet.

*

Lily stays up late, afterwards; tries to lead herself into believing it’s the ridiculously warm weather that’s keeping her awake, and not this nagging, singular thought that may or may not involve an apology.

She sends the message around midnight, holding her breath. _I’m really sorry. I’ll never ask again._ She tries to rephrase a few times, only to come back to the original words; on the nth reconstruction attempt, she presses send with one eye open.

Kat’s reply comes quickly: _It’s alright._ Lily exhales, relieved; her hand’s still shakily holding her phone when another message comes in: _Her name’s Elizabeth._

Lily smiles, feels a door to something open slightly. _Anytime you wanna talk, yeah?_ she just says, to which Kat just replies with a curt, _Thanks._

It’s almost daybreak when Lily feels the initial tug of sleep, her eyes going blurry, finally, after staring at the same message for a long while.

*

Kat does ask about him, but only once; refers to him as that boy Lily dated on the set of Skins.

“I never told anyone,” Lily says. They’re out on the pier again, that afternoon; it’s a Saturday, and Lily bought them cotton candy. Kat has her gaze set somewhere far away. “I mean, it was complicated, looking back. I didn’t know what I was thinking.”

“It was none of our business, anyway,” Kat says.

Lily shakes her head. “To a degree, it was,” she says. “I mean, we were friends, weren’t we.”

For a while, Kat doesn’t say anything; doesn’t even nod or shake her head. When she moves, it’s to slide out a cigarette pack from a pocket; the sight of it pushes Lily’s brow upward, slightly. “Sorry,” Kat murmurs with an unlit fag between her lips. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” says Lily, breathing in. “Just that, I haven’t seen you smoke in a while, I almost thought you quit.”

Kat flicks her lighter open, shakes her head as she inhales deeply her first hit. “But you did, didn’t you?” she asks, blowing to the side.

Lily bites her lip, feels her face lose color momentarily. Kat reads her too well. “It’s bad for my voice,” she manages, after a while, though the way Kat’s looking at her tells her how Kat sees through the lie, somehow.

They say nothing as Kat wears down her cigarette to the filter; Lily balls her hands up in tight fists closely beside her, to keep the want at bay; wonders when exactly this feeling began.

*

Before alighting from Kat’s vehicle that night, Lily’s head fills with questions to the point of overflow. Somewhere inside, a dam feels like breaking, and something like, “What do you think is this?” manages to swim out, despite best efforts of keeping such things close to the chest, hidden.

Kat blinks. “What are you on about?”

Lily blinks herself, her heart skipping. “Forget it,” she says instead, in a moment of panic. “Just thinking out loud.” She tells herself to get out, as soon as possible, but when she moves toward the door, Kat wraps a hand around her wrist and grips.

“Lily.” Her name falls out heavily, like warning.

Lily falls back against her seat and sighs. “Sorry, it’s just that – when I wake in the morning, it’s you. And before I go to bed, it’s you. I feel like I’m fucking—”

“You feel like we’re cheating on him, aren’t you?”

Lily pauses to breathe; her lungs fill with air and it’s painful. “That’s not it,” she says, and for a moment she feels her throat closing up amidst the pressure, buckling under the weight of this heavily throbbing heart. “I’m not even seeing him anymore, Kat.”

There’s a shift in Kat’s face that Lily can’t quite place; it’s as if a cloud had moved to the side and let the moon shine upon it clearly. Lily looks at her, tries to figure out what’s going on under Kat’s skin, tries to find the faintest hint of a smile.

“Run that by me again?” Kat says, softly.

Lily swallows. “I’m not even seeing him anymore.”

When Kat kisses Lily, she grabs her by the collar and pulls, forcefully, the fabric catching painfully at the skin of Lily’s nape, suddenly. At some point, Lily feels something burning, though she can’t quite pinpoint where, exactly; and so she is left with little else to do, other than succumb.

Kat’s lips move against hers in that familiar way that Lily vaguely remembers – of course, she has kissed Kat before, but then it feels so long ago, and besides, it never felt anywhere near this: painfully real in a way that her fiercely beating heart nearly splits her chest in half with the force of the feeling.

When they come up for air, Lily opens her eyes, slowly; tries to remember how she has managed to live without this all that while.

*

In the spirit of her painful consistency, Kat fucks off for a while; doesn’t send random messages in the middle of the night, doesn’t meet Lily for dinner the following Tuesday; Lily stays away from the diner this time, and she does the program the following morning, as if the past few days were perfectly ordinary things.

Alice picks up on it, a few days later than usual. “You seem awfully out of it, these days,” she notes, during one of the breaks, and Lily sags back into her seat, headset still on, and all, exhaling. “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Lily shakes her head, tentatively, stares at the clock. Fifteen seconds, and then. “She kissed me,” she says, barely audible.

Alice tries to hide her surprise. “But you’ve kissed before, haven’t you?”

“Not this way,” Lily says. She pushes herself off the backrest, leans closer to the microphone and switches to game face so instantly that Alice actually flinches; Lily turns her microphone back on just in time, speaks into it like she wasn’t just talking about kissing Kat a few moments ago.

*

“Safe to say, then,” Alice begins, settling across Lily and handing over an open beer. “That all those rumors were not true?”

Lily shakes her head before taking a swig, says nothing.

“Christ,” says Alice, wiping sweat off her brow. It’s a rather humid night, and the air conditioning in the bar isn’t helping anyhow. “It really looked like something was going on, you know? People don’t talk that much about things that can’t be at least halfway true.”

Lily wants to say, _Maybe there should have been something._ Or, _Maybe there was something there I didn’t see._ She puts the beer down tentatively, trails a finger down one side before going at it again, finishing the bottle in less time than she is used to.

Alice puts a hand on Lily’s forearm once she sets the bottle back down, empty. “Easy,” Alice says.

Lily blinks; none of it is.

*

That night, Lily tries to think far back to when it could have begun; what she finds is mostly this endless collage of nights that run on and on into each other: A flash of Kat’s hair here, in that shade of red that Lily used to know quite well; the glint of her piercing; Kat slurring when she’s drunk; a hand left a bit too long, gripping Lily’s knee. That time, on a show by the beach, when Kat had gripped her arm extra firmly, the first time she saw Lily coming from the filming hiatus, the way there’s a bruise on the underside of her arm after.

All those reckless kisses that used to mean nothing. _Now fucking what,_ Lily thinks to herself, her skin crawling with miscellaneous _needs_ she just can’t put names to right now. She wonders if that’s what it is to be young – being able to settle for things being undefined, though not necessarily meaningless.

She stares at her phone for a while, thinks about calling Kat for a moment. She turns it off instead, to stave off the feeling, telling herself to wait until morning, not really because everything’s better then; just that things look different in the sun.

*

Kat calls her around lunch time, on a Wednesday, after the fifth Tuesday night they don’t meet. Kat greets with an awkward, “Hi.”

Lily replies with, “I thought I’d never hear from you again.”

Kat pauses way too long before, “I want to do this right.” And then, “Can we hang out, like, soon?”

It’s just that, lately, she never really fully knows what it is she should feel, Lily thinks, and this moment is not any different; for the most part, she’s always just hovering between fear and hope and heartbreak, _all the time_ , and it’s giving her nausea. “I’m at the pharmacy,” she says, and Kat mumbles something like, “Fifteen minutes,” before hanging up.

It feels far longer than it actually is; Lily sits on a bench just outside, lights a fag like she hasn’t in quite a while. This thing about smoking is a lot like bicycles, or well-taught algebra; once you know something, you never really forget how, though Lily wheezes a bit at the beginning.

Kat arrives ten minutes later. It’s five minutes earlier than promised, and yet Lily feels too drawn out and shaky, like her nerves have been stripped into thin fibers while waiting.

“You’re smoking,” Kat notes. The look on her face is barely decipherable, and Lily stubs her cigarette against the bench edge, rubs her hands together.

“So,” Lily says, getting off the bench, and leaning against the open window of Kat’s passenger seat. “You wanna do this here, or…”

Kat interrupts with, “Let’s go.” Lily slides into the passenger seat, wordlessly, catching Kat’s eye at the side mirror at some point, before looking away.

*

Kat takes her to the pier, and they pass a cigarette to and fro, leaning against the hood of Kat’s car and facing the sea; they’re quiet for a good half hour before anything else is said.

“I’m not sorry I kissed you,” Kat says, finally, drawing from her cigarette with a slight hiss; Lily imagines Kat’s tongue catching between her teeth, and Lily has to shift from one leg to the other to keep her balance. Kat hands the cigarette over as she exhales; she’s staring at her shoes.

“Me neither,” Lily only says, staying a bit longer with the cigarette, drawing twice before passing; when Kat’s fingertips brush against hers on the way, it only makes Lily jump a little, considering how unbelievably raw she’s feeling at the moment.

“That would have been so much easier, had we done that when we were younger, yeah?” asks Kat, laughing a little. “I think.”

“While we were doing Skins, you mean?” says Lily, reaching over for the cigarette when Kat holds on too long, and Kat hands her the pack instead.

“Not necessarily, just, younger," Kat says. "Everybody was looking out for it anyway.” She drops the fag after, crushing it with a heel. “You know how many hearts you broke when you started going out with that guy in public?”

“No idea,” Lily shrugs, smiling as she lights another fag; sucks on the filter a little before exhaling slightly, pulling the stick away slightly and breathing at the burning tip of it.

Kat moves over to get the pack, lingers a little on the skin at the back of Lily’s hand; Lily tries not to look. “Well, for starters, not just mine,” Kat says, pulling the pack to herself, finally.

The second time they kiss, it is Lily who moves in first, dropping her lit cigarette and nearly straddling Kat, and something about making out with Kat on the hood of her car out in the open just begins tripping wires Lily never even thought she had, to begin with. Off the side, there’s the rustling sound of a pack of cigarettes falling to the ground.

Kat grips Lily at the waist, as firm as her small hands can, and Lily feels like it’s mostly to keep them from falling backwards; Lily can’t breathe, but she’s into it so much she can’t be bothered to care, though when the thought that she’s kissing Kat rather forcefully crosses her mind, Lily eventually wills herself to slow down.

When it ends, Lily opens her eyes first, watches as Kat’s eyes come to focus a split-second later. Kat asks, “What was that?”

Lily just says, “Something that took a while.”

*

Kat figures it out quickly, after; Lily’s off the program by noon, and she hangs out often at the pharmacy for ice cream or cotton candy or the occasional fag. Kat drives by when she can, sneaking out on officially sanctioned lunch breaks that should never last more than an hour but do anyway, more often than not; not like it can be helped.

Most days, Kat takes her to the pier, where it’s quiet and not too hot; the salt in the breeze almost always reminds Lily of summer, and it’s always so fond, Lily feels her heart so near to bursting; especially when she’s looking at Kat while attempting to negotiate with her ice cream and cigarette at the same time, which happens way too often.

Lily knows it’s such a precarious place, this; Kat was right when she said this would’ve been easier if they’d done this earlier, and not only because they would have had age as an excuse. Lily hasn’t forgotten how there are things Kat still keeps close to her chest, and most nights, these thoughts keep her up: At one point she is marveling at how far Kat has gone from constant inebriation to being this responsibly sober, yet soon after, Lily’s negotiating with the thought of another girl she knows nothing about, other than her name.

But then on afternoons like this, when Kat’s making a mess of herself at the hood of her car – Lily thinks it’s nearly worth the risk.

“What?” Kat asks, grinning as she catches Lily’s eye.

Lily shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says, rolling her eyes before reaching over to dab at the corner of Kat’s mouth with a napkin. “Time check?”

Kat doesn’t even look at her watch. “We have time,” she just says.

Lily breathes in. Then again, perhaps, they do.#  


**Author's Note:**

> None of these is true; a lot of liberty has been taken with a lot of things. Title is from Anberlin.


End file.
